Pincher leaves DLUHC

So Christopher Pincher joins the list of former Housing and Planning Ministers to bite the dust when he had hardly had time to warm the office chair with his posterior [1]. But then Housing and Planning are such unimportant subjects, so much less sexy than sorting out the chaos resulting from Brexit or cutting public services and benefits. After all, it’s not as if any significant legislation on Town and Country Planning is in the offing in the foreseeable future, so a tyro Housing and Planning Minister with no knowledge or experience in this area of policy (Stuart Andrew MP, previously a Deputy Whip) can be confident of a quiet snooze in his new post, er, can’t he?

Other ministers who have been shuffled out of their jobs today have moved straight to other ministerial posts, but at the time of writing, Pincher does not seem to have a new job. He was tipped to become Chief Whip, but that post has gone to Chris Heaton-Harris. [2]

[1] He had in fact been Housing Minister for 2 years; his role was redesignated in Septemebr 2021, which is the date of appointment that was shown on the Gov.UK website. So he turns out to have been 'long-serving' by ministerial standards!

[2] Pincher was in fact appointed as Deputy Chief Whip, after a delay of 5 hours, which led some political journalists to wonder why.

[Postscript (5 July 2022): On that final point, I think we now have an inkling of what may have occasioned that 5-hour delay in Pincher's appoointment as Deputy Chief Whip. What is surprising in retrospect is not that it was delayed (presumably due to certain misgivings in offcicial circles) but that it went ahead at all. In the event, his appointment didn't last very long.]

© MARTIN H GOODALL